This chapter explores these three features, the processes that keep the Coast in constant motion, and the history of human involvement in the workings of this dynamic zone.

Landscape/Seascape

It is hard to mark precise boundaries for what is meant by the term "coast:' Strictly speaking, a coast is the exact line along which the ocean laps onto land. By this definition, the position of a coast is always fluctuating with the daily ebb and surge of tide and constant crash of surf. But such a narrow view misses the true significance of the interplay between land and ocean. Coastal events affect stream flow, vegetation, climate, and other factors tens of miles inland from the precise line along which land and sea meet. A better definition would be that the coast is the entire region significantly affected by ocean processes.

Bordering the coast of North America from Mexico to New York City is a collar of low, flat, sandy terrain. Unlike the dramatic West Coast of North America, there are no high sea-cliffs or lofty mountains overlooking a rugged, rock-bound shore. Instead, the Appalachian Mountains are separated from the shoreline by a wide zone of flat ground known as the Coastal Plain. But starting at New York City and continuing north into Canada, the Coastal Plain is absent and hills are found close to the shoreline. This is one of the most fundamental observations to make about Connecticut's Coast: there is no coastal plain.

The Coastal Plain was created from the same mountains which it separates from the sea. Gravity does not love a mountain, and the Appalachians have been experiencing this antipathy in the form of erosion for tens of millions of years. The material shed from the mountainsides has been laid down over their bedrock flanks in a massive, seaward-thickening wedge of sediments, stretching from Mexico to northern Canada. South of New York, the surf crashes onto the middle of the wedge; the portion that rises above sea level is the Coastal

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